


Lord and Liege

by Island_of_Reil



Series: The Samavian Sequence [1]
Category: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Graphic Depicitions of Illness, Graphic Descriptions of Wartime Violence, Grief/Mourning, Influenza, Internalized Homophobia, Loyalty, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 08:30:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Great War took Stefan; the great sickness nearly took the Rat. He recovered, and so have both Marco and Samavia. Now it is time for Marco to take a queen. A brave young woman, the daughter of patriots, catches his eye... but she is not the only one he wants.</p><p>After a lifetime of hardship, self-denial, trauma, and grief, Marco is unsure he can trust in pleasure, especially forbidden pleasure. But, as the Rat tells him, Samavia needs to see more than just courage and honor in its king: "Now they want you to show them it was all worth surviving. They want to see joy in you, too.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lord and Liege

**_Early spring, 1920_ **

As they had so many times before, Marco’s fingers traced the Cyrillic letters carved into the marble of the tomb, cold to his touch now:

KING IVOR II  
“STEFAN LORISTAN”  
1863-1918  
EVER MAY THE LAMP BURN BRIGHTLY

There had only been time to mourn at night.

After prevailing over her enemies within, Samavia had had only two blessed years of peace and reconstruction when the Great War flung hosts more of them at her. Stefan had wasted no time cementing alliances, Marco at his side to listen and watch and learn, before plunging into battle, leading an army of Forgers of the Sword trained in haste by the Austro-Hungarians.

The next year, when Marco turned fifteen, he chose to fight alongside his father despite the alarmed protestations of the royal advisors. With his powerful arms and sharp eyes, the Rat, then sixteen, had already become a feared sniper. By the time Marco joined him in battle, his inborn ability to call men to action had made him a captain of snipers.

Marco’s lips twisted at the memory of saying to his father, in London, _I am a child but am I not a man also?_ Oh, certainly, for a boy of twelve he had been brave and dutiful. But the worst that had happened to him then was a day and night locked into a wine cellar. Rather a far cry from taking two bullets in the side at once, then having them removed with not quite enough anesthesia. Or lifting his Steyr before him and watching a man die, over and over and over. If he had to choose one to live over again — kill, or nearly _be_ killed — he wasn’t sure which he would choose.

More than three years later, he faced a new and strange world, and — with no slur meant to the Rat, none at all — he as good as faced it alone. In the late winter of the war’s last year, death had risen up from the earth to meet Stefan in the form of a mortar.

The next several months often found Marco kneeling beside his father’s effigy, arms flung around the cold marble, far into the night. The simple prescriptions given on a serene ledge in India and refined over the decades helped him wake each morning, make himself look regal, and deal with or delegate an endless procession of matters. So, of course, did the Rat, for all that the Rat grieved plainly and grieved enough for three. But neither Buddhist precept nor brother-in-arms filled the echoing emptiness the mortar had smashed into his existence.

He had once known the helpless, bewildered grief of the motherless child. His grief for his father was not so primal, not so terrifying, but it was profound: the grief of one who has known and loved another the likes of whom the world will never see again, then seen that life snuffed out in an instant. So he knelt on the cold marble floor, and he hugged his wounded body to the chill marble representation of his father, the cold drilling into his bones, until, at some point every night, he heard the drag of crutches and felt a hand on his shoulder and heard the whisper, “Marco. _Please._ Go to bed and sleep.”

He filled his days with matters of state, mainly foreign. The war was not about to stop out of respect for his grief. Nights, when he couldn’t sleep and he wasn’t in Stefan’s tomb, he drank and spoke with Rudolf, the prince who had sheltered him in Vienna. Giving the man asylum in return was the least he could do, and it was no small thing to have an experienced soldier and diplomat at his side in this time of need, his own and Samavia’s.

Rudolf had been no unblooded boy before the Great War, but even this chill and cynical man could not comprehend all that he had seen in the last few years. Over schnapps or vodka, or sometimes the thick sweet plum wine brewed in the mountains to the south of Melzarr, he and Marco would talk of politics, then indulge in gossip, then speak of personal things. Then one of them would abruptly begin to speak of death that rained from the sky, faces smashed to bits with living men still behind them, men taking one wrong step and turning into fountains of red gore, clouds that descended upon battlefields and set soldiers to gasping as blood streamed from their eyes and mouths. The cold mask beneath the greying blond lock would slip, and the blue eyes would burn like sulfur. Marco understood why the mask had formed in the first place.

Several months after Stefan died, Marco slowly began to be able to hear his father’s name or see his own face in the mirror without his throat closing up or a pang shooting through his chest. Shortly thereafter, the sickness came.

High summer brought with it a winter’s grippe that carried off not only many old and infirm Samavians but many healthy babes, too, in a country that could ill afford the loss of them. Then, as summer shaded into autumn, strong young men and women began to fall like leaves. That is, if leaves turned not gold and red but black and dark blue.

God be thanked, Marco did not fall ill. But the Rat did.

When Marco first heard, he had to tear his shoulders out Rastka’s and Vorversk’s panicked grips. Rastka’s voice was still tremulous after his summer bout with the sickness, but it rang clearly down the long hall, trailing the hurried pounding of Marco’s boots on the flagstones. “Your father is _dead!_ You cannot risk yourself, cannot risk _Samavia_ , like this!” The words _Your Majesty_ were left off entirely.

Marco ignored both the entreaty and the breach of protocol. He kept running, kept climbing, his heart keeping precise, military time with the strikes of his boots on the floor, until he came to the Rat’s bedchamber and pushed the heavy door open.

Nothing that greeted him therein would leave him for the rest of his life. The acid reek of vomit mingled with the metallic smell of blood, and also the rank sweat of the deathly ill. Bedclothes splashed and stiffening with dark crimson, not all of it having come up as liquid. The Rat’s unseeing eyes, hollowed even more deeply into his skull, as were his cheeks. The lividity of his flesh, everywhere that wasn’t covered by his nightshirt or the bedclothes or by gouts of blood. Marco would have taken him for dead were it not for the violent, spasmodic convulsions of his chest — and for the sound Marco would hear for decades after in nightmares. A bubbling, gasping wheeze. The sound of a man drowning.

Marco dropped to his knees beside the bed and took a limp blue hand in his strong brown one.

“Rat,” he whispered. “Jeremy Ratcliffe. You will not leave me, Captain. You are my aide-de-camp. You will recover. If you go with Death, you will have as grand a state funeral as my father did, and your name will be printed in the history books and sung in the ballads, but I will forever mark you down in my heart as a traitor and a coward who abandoned me at my time of greatest need.”

The Rat gave no sign of having heard him, not then. But, one week later, as Marco sat in his council chamber with Rastka and the others, the door creaked open, and all heads spun to watch a hunched figure drag himself into the chamber.

The Rat’s progress to his seat was a slow, excruciating spectacle, during which Marco could not hear a single breath in the chamber, only the scrape of crutches against the floor. When the Rat finally took his place at the massive, heavy table, he turned a face tight with pain and exhaustion to Marco. His light-grey eyes burned, but there was no hint of fever or delirium in them. As pale as he was, at least he was no longer the color of sloes.

The relief that flooded him nearly tipped Marco out of his chair — and an odd, painful constriction of his heart made it difficult for him to speak. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat.

“Captain Ratcliffe. I am glad that you could join us today. The worst of your illness seems to be behind you.”

The Rat flicked his eyes from Marco’s face to those of the other councilors, and to the two empty seats that remained at the table. Each of the two missing councilors had been a hale young man only a month before. The Rat’s expression did not change, nor did his face regain any of its normal color.

He returned his gaze to Marco. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, but it held the familiar note of iron. “It is. What news have I missed this last week, my lord and liege?”

The memory of Stefan had by now ceased to be a dagger in Marco’s wounded side, twisting and drawing fresh blood all through the day. With the sparing of the Rat, Marco could believe more easily what he had been told: that, someday, his father’s memory would be only a comfort to him.

That day would not be soon, but he had made his peace with that.

 

A soft, repetitive sound intruded into the quiet of the royal burying ground. His heart skipped just once, even before his mind’s ear recognized the still-indistinct sound of crutches moving through last year’s yellowed grass. He kept his eyes on his father’s epitaph, schooling his features to impassivity. The sound grew louder, then ceased abruptly, inches from his right side.

"I am fine,” he said quietly in English, pre-empting the question.

The Rat’s only reply was to shift on his crutches and lower himself to the ground. Leaning against the outer wall of the tomb, he folded his wasted legs beneath him and laid the crutches to his side. Still Marco did not look at him.

"You’ve been here a while,” the Rat said eventually, in an even tone and in the same tongue. Marco had the deeper voice, but since his illness the Rat’s had grown huskier, as if scars had been left in his lungs and throat. Marco sometimes had difficulty believing that when they had first become acquainted, the Rat had often, literally, squeaked.

“Are there matters that cannot be delegated?” Now Marco did turn his head toward the Rat. “I imagine that all but a few things, you could sort out on my behalf, if need be.”

“I imagine so.” The Rat’s expression was as neutral as his voice. “But, no, nothing urgent demands your attention just at this moment.”

The deep-set eyes seemed to hold Marco’s like a pin through a butterfly, even without any strong emotion in them, and not for the first time since the Rat’s illness. Marco thought of the old Samavian tales in which men and women returned from the precipice of death, marked by the gods into whose faces they had looked. Did anyone else besides him note this change in the Rat?

Aware that he was staring and that a silence had begun to stretch between them, Marco blinked and asked, “Is there more news from Russia? Has the White Army rallied since Novorossiysk?”

“There is no more news,” the Rat said flatly. “That reversal of fortune is unlikely to be undone.”

“I don’t suppose the Bolsheviks are eager to treat with royalty in any form.”

“I don’t suppose they are,” the Rat agreed. He reached inside his greatcoat and took out a steel case and lighter. Marco frowned as the Rat placed a cigarette between his lips and set the other end aglow.

The Rat, catching his frown, glared at him defiantly as he dragged on the cigarette. Marco stilled his tongue and forced his eyes not to roll. They had had that conversation many times before, especially since the Rat’s recovery, and they would certainly have it again. They did not need to have it here and now.

Instead, he dropped his head and muttered, “Butchers. Bloody-handed butchers.”

“They are,” the Rat said. “Not much better than what they’ve supplanted.”

Marco jerked his head up sharply. “‘Not much better’? They murder in cold blood. Do you countenance the slaughter of the Imperial family, including four innocent young women?”

The Rat removed his cigarette from his mouth and blew a foul-smelling cloud before him. Manhood had sharpened the angles of his face even further, while war and illness had deepened the lines in it. He looked older than his twenty-one years, but his youthful shock of thick brown hair and — Marco had to admit — the cigarette that frequently hung from between his thin lips gave him a rakish look overall. Not a handsome visage, but a compelling one.

“I do not,” he said, in a tone implying gross insult that Marco would even ask the question. When Marco did not rise to the bait, he continued, “I can see, however, why they would consider it a necessity.”

“It was no necessity,” Marco snapped. He thought of a woman in Paris, a tall woman with sharp black eyes and a delicate nose, the leashes of three little dogs in her hand.

The Rat took another puff of his cigarette, then said, “Russia is not Samavia. Or, at least, it is not the Samavia of the Fedorovich. Our nobles have copious faults, but these days they do not beat or ravish peasants for sport, nor work them like mules — no, like engines, because mules must be fed and watered and rested — and barely pay them enough for their daily bread.”

Marco threw his hands into the air. “What difference does that make? Does one evil justify another?"

“I don’t know, Marco. Shall we find some starving men and ask them?”

“Don’t be flippant,” Marco snapped.

“I gave your question precisely the reply it deserved.” There was genuine anger now in the Rat’s voice, which he had raised slightly, and in his eyes. “You do remember where you found me, don’t you — my lord and liege?”

Since Stefan had died, Marco never lowered his gaze from anyone but the Rat. He lowered it now, and he cursed himself silently for a fool.

The Rat’s next words were spoken more quietly, but the hard edge had not disappeared from his voice. “What, do you think, has happened to the men of my Squad since we left England?”

Marco knew the answer as well as the Rat did. Any men — in fact as well as name now — of the Squad who yet lived almost certainly lived in squalor and in hunger. If they had become law-abiding men, they labored for pittances. If not, they courted early deaths at the hands of other criminals or of patrolmen, perhaps of juries and hangmen. Any children they had, and almost certainly some of the Squad would be fathers by now, were unlikely to do any better.

A few of the men would have been old enough to have been sent to the trenches. Some, undoubtedly, came home as heroes. In some cases, heroes with unwhole bodies from whom people looked away in the street and the shop and in church, as they had done to the Rat all his life. Some would have been branded cowards after their minds had come apart on the battlefield. Most would have received pensions. Or, at least, their widows and children would have.

Marco sighed. “Rat, I am not insensate to those injustices. Regardless of what you might think.” He held up a hand when the Rat began to protest around his cigarette. “I intend to institute reforms, no matter how long they take. If only to fend off Bolsheviks gaining power here in Samavia. That might be the only argument the nobles will listen to.”

The Rat extinguished the cigarette against the damp ground and returned the stub to his cigarette case. “Will you legislate your throne out of existence?” The anger in his voice had given way to a dry and keen-edged irony that he had never evinced before the war.

Marco gave a short bark of laughter. “No. Perhaps my son will, one day. For me to do so would be like presenting a pack of hyenas with a decaying corpse.”

The Rat’s familiar crooked grin appeared. Strip away their finery and their high-flown rhetoric, and Marco’s was an apt description of the nobles of the Samavian court. A fire of righteousness may burn beneath an uprising, the spirit of unity may bind countrymen marshaling their strength against foreign foes or the wrath of nature, but these gutter and dissolve in the mundane concerns of peacetime. And neither righteousness nor unity would sway the lords of neighboring lands if they ever perceived Marco to have a tenuous grip on his throne.

Marco understood why some men so loved war. It was a game for brutes and devils, but at heart it was a simple one.

“I correct myself,” the Rat said in a lighter voice. “I do, actually, have some news for you, although it is not official yet. Tomorrow you shall have a pair of new visitors.”

The sudden animation in the pale eyes lifted the corners of Marco’s mouth. “Oh? Who importunes me now?”

The Rat returned the smile, and the warmth of it leapt like living flame into Marco’s throat and chest.

“A pair of rather charming importuners. One of them, you know. Both of us know.”

 

“My lord and liege,” said a rich voice, low-pitched for a woman’s but melodic, that managed to blend affectionate irony with grave respect.

She sank down before him in a deep curtsy. As she rose, he took the gloved hands of Anna Vasilyevna Terveova in his and gave her the placid smile of royal welcome, suppressing a broader smile and the desire to fling his arms around her.

“Anna Vasilyevna,” he said. “How fare Your Illustrious Highness’s Pekingese spaniels these days?”

Her black eyes sparkled. There were more lines around them now than when he and the Rat had first encountered her at the Place de la Concorde. “Well, Your Majesty, one of them is no longer with us, poor thing, but the other two are quite hale for their ages, and I have bought them a new little sister in the meantime.”

This brought smiles to the faces of the courtiers in attendance, Samavian and foreign alike, in some cases despite themselves. The Countess Terveova was a handsome woman with a winning manner, not to mention a heroine of the nation. Only fools let down their guard at court — and the Countess was no fool — but Marco doubted the woman had a sole true enemy here.

“What brings you before me, my dear _madame_?”

Her voice did not change as she spoke, but her eyes hardened, and they no longer sparkled but burned.

“I am sure Your Majesty has heard of the recent… events in the land of my birth.”

Anna Vasilyevna Ignatieva had been born in Moscow to a Russian nobleman and an exiled Samavian noblewoman. General Nikolay Terveov, the Samavian count she had married, had died in a field outside Melzarr at the hands of an Iavorich.

“I have, _madame_ , and it grieves me to know of them.”

She inclined her head in gratitude, and she continued. “There is no question of me and what is left of my family returning to Russia, Your Majesty. I would have remained with my children in Paris, but there are rumors that Bolshevik assassins seek out what remains of the Russian nobility all across Europe.”

Angry mutters arose from the watching courtiers. Marco held up one hand to silence them.

“The Russian Imperial family is dead, _madame_ , murdered in cold blood. Do the Reds, or the Whites for that matter, truly believe it can be resurrected from the scattered nobility?”

“Most do not, Your Majesty,” Anna Vasilyevna said. “But there will always be some who harbor that hope… or that fear.” Her mouth tightened. “And then there will be those who seek to kill nobility for the pleasure of it — and, in the case of noblewomen, defile them first, if they can.”

The court erupted. This time Marco let them shout their rage and repugnance for a good minute before he put up his hand. They fell silent immediately but he could still hear, could still _feel_ , them seethe around him.

“ _Madame_ , you are one of the stalwart few who listened to the words of two ragged boys and set in motion the chain of events that, for now, ends with you standing here before me. Your loyalty to Samavia is without question. You are to consider this your court, this your country, for as long as you wish, and the same holds for your children.”

She dropped into another low curtsy. When she raised her head, the black eyes glistened. “Thank you, my lord and liege,” she said with a catch in her voice.

“You are most welcome, Anna Vasilyevna,” Marco said, and meant it. “But I am told you did not come alone today. Are your children here with you, at court?”

“The younger two are at the dacha of a good friend in the countryside, Your Majesty. I did not wish to present them until … matters were more settled.”

A whisper or two went up among the courtiers at that, but Marco neither took nor feigned umbrage. “A mother’s instinct for her young ones’ safety is a thing to be respected,” he said, and the whispers quelled. “And your oldest child? A daughter, if I recall correctly?”

“You do recall correctly, Your Majesty, and I have brought her with me today.”

Anna Vasilyevna did not turn her head or gesture in any way. At her last words, a tall young girl stepped forward into the sudden hush, came to stand next to the Countess, and sank into the same deep curtsy as her mother had, though with the more fluid movement of youth.

Marco looked down at the glossy black braids pinned around her head. “You may rise, _mademoiselle_.”

She obeyed. He looked into the same burning dark eyes, the same strong brows nearly meeting across the bridge of the same delicate nose. She did not have her mother’s pale olive complexion but a darker one, much like Marco’s, set off to great effect by a white batiste gown with heavy embroidery. Her lashes were startlingly long, and her lips were full. A lifetime of training helped him keep his eyes from settling on them, or moving lower, but not without a certain sense of regret.

The Rat had intimated as much the day before, but it was obvious that this was not a mere first presentation at court for the girl. Nor was Anna Vasilyevna the first mother to bring a nubile daughter before Marco. Samavia had been at peace for more than a year, repairing itself and renewing its fortunes. Its young king was expected to continue the royal line. This required a queen.

“What is your name, _mademoiselle_?” he asked her gently.

“I am called Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova, Your Majesty,” she said. Her voice was low, like her mother’s, but as fierce as either her own or her mother’s eyes, with no lilt of cosmopolitan humor.

“Be welcome to my court, Paulina Nikolaevna,” Marco said.

She lowered her head in grateful deference, but the eyes continued to burn at him through the long, thick lashes.

“I thank you, Your Majesty.”

“What have you been studying in Paris, _mademoiselle_?”

“French and English, Your Majesty. I am already fluent in Russian and Samavian, of course, as well as German. In addition, I have been studying literature, music, philosophy, the natural sciences, and of course history.”

“Would this last include the history of Samavia?” Marco inquired, his tone mild.

The pride fairly blazed out of not just her eyes but her entire being, even with her head down. “Your Majesty, I have been tutored in the history of Samavia since I was knee-high to my father of blessed memory. But, yes, my teacher in Paris made sure to fill in any lacunae remaining in my understanding, as all pupils suffer.”

It was well done, this declaration that she was not merely an honored guest of Samavia but a native daughter. She did not stammer, she did not earnestly recite schoolgirl lessons to the jaded crowd, she did not trowel on the sugared coyness he had seen in far too many girls presented to him, and she ended on a note of modesty. Any number of eyes now assessed her with interest and calculation.

It was a piece of irony, Marco thought, that for all his power he had no practical way to assess her in any more depth than the courtiers could. He understood that few would consider it a necessity. A royal marriage did not require much of the woman besides bloodline and fertility, and a king was considered to have the prerogative of enjoying the company of other women as he liked if the company of his queen fell short in any respect.

Yet this young woman seemed to promise more than a bloodline and fertility, even more than beauty. If she took after her mother in more than looks, she promised a great deal of courage, vigor, and intelligence; and she would mature into a regal elegance. All Samavian queens who came after her might very well be measured against her.

Marco wished he could sit alone somewhere with Paulina Nikolaevna and draw her out in conversation, see what else besides love of country turned the gears of her brain and lay kindling for her spirit. But he was unsure how this could be done without jeopardizing her reputation. In the presence of a chaperone, she would likely guard her tongue.

He wondered, indeed, how he himself would fare in such a meeting. Stefan had inculcated in him enough grace and poise to speak to an archangel if he had to. But one would not speak to a messenger of the Lord the way one would to a lovely young girl whose better acquaintance one desires to make — and he had little experience in the latter. He wryly considered how astonished most Samavians would be to learn that their handsome, poised, and well-spoken king had never lain with either woman or man.

Not that many of the former didn’t catch his eye, or a fair number of the latter for that matter. But the idea of seeking out the body of another for pleasure filled Marco with unease, for all that he was no cross-clutching zealot of chastity. “Even if one is hungry enough to feel ravenous, a man who has been well bred will not allow himself to look so,” Stefan had once said to Marco, and over time Marco came to understand that his father had not been speaking only of food. Even looking back on his childhood through a man’s eyes, he could see no evidence that Stefan’s mind had not simply ordered his desires into quiescence. He saw no reason he himself should not do the same.

He turned back to Anna Vasilyevna. “Your daughter is a young woman of beauty, learning, and an evident love for Samavia. She will be a jewel in this court, as will be her distinguished and lovely mother.”

The Countess Terveova smiled and inclined her head. “You do us both much honor, Your Majesty.”

“The honor is all mine,” Marco replied.

Anna Vasilyevna and Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova were the last people to stand before him in the throne room that day. The crowd of courtiers began to disperse in a cloud of animated whispers as Marco stood, preparing to remove himself to the council chamber. His advisors would join him there.

As he strode down the hallway, Prince Rudolf appeared at his side and kept pace with him. “That girl,” he said beneath his breath. “Terveov’s daughter.”

“Yes, what of her?”

Marco wasn’t expecting a low chuckle. “That one, I can almost assure you, would keep your bed _very,_ very warm.”

Marco gave the exiled prince a cold look and received a scornfully amused one in return. “Oh, don’t act like an abbess with me, Marco. I cast no aspersions on her virtue. I simply make note of her evident… warm nature. I have seen enough such women in my life.”

“I suppose ‘seen’ is not the operative verb,” Marco muttered.

Rudolf laughed more loudly this time; it rang off the stone walls. “It is not, no.” His voice dropped again. “In all seriousness, however, that match would have no drawbacks to it. She has the lineage, she has the bearing, she shares your love of this nation. There is no harm in these things being accompanied by benefits to you quite independent of those which Samavia will reap. Of course, the country _would_ benefit from the rule of a king whose, er, scepter is well polished on a regular basis—”

“My lord Rastka!” Marco interrupted a bit too loudly, clasping the baron’s hand in his and shaking it heartily as he stepped into the chamber.

“Your Majesty, Your Highness,” Rastka said gravely, acknowledging both Marco and Rudolf. “My lord and liege, do you fare well? Pardon my impertinence but your face seems a bit flushed.”

“I am perhaps slightly warm, but it is nothing,” Marco said. If Rudolf, now in conversation with another councilor, heard him, he did not acknowledge it.

 

After the Rat had stopped laughing, he said, “Well, it’s not as if the man is _wrong_.”

They were lying in a patch of forest on a hillside near the Jiardasian border. It was where they had rested after first crossing into Samavia, so long ago. It was only the second time they had ever returned here. The first had been two days after the nation of Samavia laid the man once known as Stefan Loristan to his eternal rest.

They had spread a horse blanket over the chill forest floor, in concession to Marco’s wound, then stretched out upon it. Their hobbled mounts grazed placidly several yards downhill. The Rat’s swift black mare bore a specially made saddle with braces for his legs; he had learned to control the animal with his hands and arms alone, and they seldom lagged behind Marco on his white stallion.

Marco would not blaspheme by calling this a _holy_ place, the same as the old, old church far above them on the mountain. But it was a place he set aside from others in his heart and mind, a place for him and the Rat to rest, and to speak candidly without fear of spies, and to finish one another’s thoughts just as fearlessly.

He needed to be in such a place now. To take a wife, especially a queen, was as momentous as to lose a father was.

The Rat was staring up into the feather-like clusters of bare branches, resting his head and the hunch of his back against a satchel. Surreptitiously, Marco let his gaze glide down the body of his captain. The day was mild enough that the Rat had opened his greatcoat. Beneath the shirt that had been tailored to accommodate the curve of his spine, the rope-like muscles of his long arms were apparent, as were the flatter ones of his chest and belly. The length of his torso suggested that had he been born whole, he might have stood taller than Marco, and Marco was quite tall. For all that he’d stood on the threshold of death — and continued to court it cigarette by cigarette, Marco thought with irritation — the Rat was much stronger and healthier than anyone who had known him as a child would have expected him to turn out.

Marco dragged his thoughts back to the words the Rat had just spoken, and he frowned. “It should not matter to his kingdom whether a king’s appetites are well whetted.”

The Rat scoffed. “Perhaps it _shouldn’t_. But it _does_. A king is a man, isn’t he, after all?”

“A king stands above other men. This entails burdens as well as privileges. My father would have said the same.”

The Rat did not reply immediately. Birds filled in the ensuing silence: turtledoves with their deep rumbles, shrikes with their indignant peeps, warblers and serins and wrens with their rapid-fire twittering.

At last, he said, “Marco, you know that I honored your father as much as you did, loved him almost as much.” He hesitated.

“Which is of course why you are about to gainsay him,” Marco said stiffly.

The Rat had begun to fish inside his greatcoat. Silently he took out the cigarette case and lighter, slipped a cigarette into his mouth, and lit it. Marco waited. There was no hurry.

At length the Rat removed the cigarette, holding it between two fingers and pondering it as he exhaled smoke. He said, “I owe your father a great deal, for which I could never had repaid him. He was an exceptional man. As are you,” he added quickly. “He raised you very well. But… I think he forgot, at times, that there are things in life beyond the throne of Samavia. Or a high ledge in India.”

He took another drag and said pointedly, “I do not think your subjects wanted him to forget that, or want you to. Oh, surely, they want to see duty and honor in you, but after the last eight years they’ve seen plenty. Now they want you to show them it was all worth surviving. They want to see joy in you, too.”

 _Joy._ It was a strange word for the Rat to utter, for Marco to hear, after so many years in a country and on a continent stalked first by one Horseman, then by another.

“And appetite,” the Rat added around the cigarette, which was back in his mouth. “You needn’t wench from one end of the country to another, but… I think it would be a good thing to show your people that you appreciate a beautiful Samavian woman, and not simply for her devotion to Samavia.”

Marco’s face felt warm once again. “Well… I do appreciate such women.”

The Rat snorted. “You say that so convincingly.” After another long drag, he took the cigarette out of his mouth again. Then he began to chuckle. “I never told you this, but a few years ago, three or four of my snipers approached me and inquired as to the propriety of all of them chipping in to pay a willing and clean girl to, er, join you in your tent for a night.”

Marco’s head jerked up, and he stared in disbelief at the Rat.

“I would _hope_ you dissuaded them!”

“I did,” the Rat said, grinning widely now. “I told them that they probably couldn’t pool enough money to compensate her sufficiently for sitting on your campstool for an hour listening to you talk about honor and Buddhism and noble, self-denying princes who lived five hundred years ago." When Marco’s expression hardened into a glare, the Rat added, more gently but still grinning, “Would it make you feel better to learn they actually did that for _me_?”

Marco ignored the new fierce surge of heat in his face, and in parts other than his face. “Not especially.”

“Good, because it went about as splendidly as it would have gone for you. To state the obvious.” The Rat took one more puff, crushed out his cigarette against the case, and tossed the spent butt into the ferns. "To give the girl credit, she had tact, discretion, and a sense of humor. I suppose those are qualities that stand whores in good stead. But I wasn’t about to tell my men that they’d have done better to bring me a handsome lad instead, preferably one who could keep it up for a cripple—”

He stopped short at Marco’s look of astonishment.

“Marco,” he said softly. “Are you honestly going to tell me you didn’t know?”

“Of _course_ I didn’t know!” Marco said hotly, his voice cracking for the first time since Stefan had died.

The Rat stared blankly at him for several seconds. Then he began to laugh again, ever louder and with ever less restraint until he fell onto his side on the horse blanket, chest heaving in mirth. Marco stared at him, open-mouthed, until the Rat had laughed himself into a coughing fit. Wiping his streaming eyes, he choked out, “Dear God, it’s _only_ the most poorly kept secret in your own bloody court!”

“How many at court know… this?” Marco demanded. His voice seemed not to want to drop back into its normal register.

The Rat seemed to be trying to contain another paroxysm of helpless laughter. “Perhaps we should start with… oh, the _score_ who have first-hand knowledge!”

Marco closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his eyes. If he pressed hard enough, perhaps he could obliterate the images that had risen unbidden to his mind’s eye and writhed there. “These are all _Samavians_? Or are you working your way through the noble ranks of Jiardasia and Beltrazo, too?”

“Why would you object to the latter?” The Rat’s grin was markedly wicked right now. “You do know that a great deal of intelligence can be reaped in a bedchamber, don’t you?”

“Reaped only by Samavians?” Marco said harshly, his hand still over his burning face. “Not by the Jiardasians or Beltrazans, too?” He felt rather ashamed at how grateful he was to be able to raise that point right now. The pitiless arena of Samavian politics seemed much more comforting a subject than that of the Rat... doing... things Marco was resolutely _not_ going to imagine.

The Rat snorted. “Give me some credit. I’m not going to put the country at risk for a dalliance.” When Marco made no reply, he added, more evenly, “Two have been Beltrazans, and one was the diplomat from Rome who was here last autumn. The rest have all been Samavian noblemen, or sons of noblemen, with a sense of discretion.

“But, trust me, a man could bed every other Beltrazan courtier without much persuasion.” The devilish look had returned, either undeterred or encouraged by Marco’s renewed stare of shock. “As for the Jiardasians…” For a brief moment he seemed lost in thought. “Maybe a third of them. Another third would never consider it, and the last third—" He chuckled. “For the last third, I’d do best to procure them a pig for the night. Or a sheep. If I dressed the animal up in a bustier before presenting it to them, they’d probably offer me the combination to the Royal Jiardasian Bank Vault, unasked.”

“Christ, Jem,” said Marco, who never took his Lord’s name in vain and almost never called his favorite captain by his Christian name or its diminutive. He shook his head.

The Rat laughed again. The sound was as wicked as his grin. “Marco, would you like to know what His Lordship, the Duke of Novi Bazar, sounds like when he comes?”

“What — what he — _no!_ ”

The Rat, still lying on his side, screwed up his face and began to emit a series of groans, grunts, and animal-like cries in a pitch lower than his usual one. He managed not to burst into renewed laughter, but his grin still split his face, his narrow shoulders were shaking, and a tear was leaking from one of his eyes.

Why in the name of God was the ground not opening up and swallowing Marco at this moment, obliging its king the way good Samavian earth should? “Rat! _Shut up!_ I _order_ you, _**stop!**_ ”

The command reaped Marco not only flagrant disobedience but an upward tick in the pitch and volume of the mimicry. For a second time he took his Lord’s name in vein, coupling it with a vile Samavian epithet he had never uttered before. Then he flung himself at the Rat, knocking him onto his curved back and clapping a hand over his mouth.

The silenced Rat stared up at Marco for several seconds with glittering eyes before he pushed upward hard. Not only were his arms remarkably powerful, but he had the advantage of surprise. Before Marco realized it, he was on his own back, and the Rat lay atop him with his hands gripping Marco’s forearms.

There was no one else around them for miles at this elevation, and the village at the top of the mountain would have been a long, hard climb. But the Rat’s face was nearly touching Marco’s, and his voice fell to a whisper, as he asked, “And what do _you_ sound like, Marco, when _you_ come? Because I’ve wanted to know that for years now.”

Marco’s mouth fell open, but there was no moisture in it, nor in his throat, with which to speak. If a few moments ago embarrassment had blazed in him like a hearth fire, now he burned in a conflagration that could have leveled cities. Helplessly, he closed his eyes, and then he felt the Rat’s lips descend upon his.

It was a soft, gentle descent, but the touch reverberated through him, and he stifled a cry against the Rat’s mouth. The Rat made a sound of reply deep in his throat, but it was not like those he had uttered in mockery shortly before; this was softer, higher, with a note of wonder to it. He seized Marco’s head, long fingers curling into the thick dark hair, and pressed his mouth harder against that of his king.

Marco groaned around both their tongues and arched upward, pushing his arousal into the Rat’s bony hip. In response, the Rat shifted until his hips aligned with Marco’s, then bore down. Marco groaned again. His hands swept over the high curve of the Rat’s back, then moved lower, cupping small, tight buttocks to bring the Rat down against him ever more tightly.

Abruptly the Rat broke off the kiss to gasp for air. Both of them were panting, and it sounded shockingly loud in the peace of the clearing. Suddenly the realization of what had just happened struck Marco like a glove across the face, and he felt his entire body go cold.

“I shouldn’t do this,” he whispered. He couldn’t meet the Rat’s eyes any longer; his gaze slid off into the distance.

“Oh, Marco,” the Rat whispered, bracing one hand against the ground while stroking Marco’s cheek with the other. "No. Don’t deny yourself."

“This is _wrong_ ,” Marco insisted, more loudly and with more force, but with a tremor in his voice. He felt the Rat’s hand freeze on him, and he closed his eyes and cursed himself silently. Twice in two days he had opened his mouth and carelessly wounded the one he loved best to the quick. He dishonored the Rat, he dishonored his father’s memory, he dishonored himself.

He wasn't surprised when the Rat slipped off him. He hadn’t expected that a pair of strong arms would then wind about him, nor that a warm face with a faint roughness of stubble would press itself into his throat.

“Marco,” the Rat whispered against his skin. “It is _not_ wrong. It gives great pleasure, it brings men closer in heart to one another, and it harms no one. I don’t give a damn what the Patriarch says, or any other ‘men of God,’ for that matter.” He spoke the phrase with less a sneer than a deep, bitter loathing, so vehement it startled Marco into silence. The pain behind it was palpable. Like a crooked spine and withered legs, or a worthless drunkard of a father, it was not a pain Marco had ever known, and he couldn’t bring himself to chide the Rat for it.

He couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all in the next moment, for the Rat was not so much kissing the side of his neck as caressing it with lips and tongue, while the fingertips of one hand stroked Marco’s nape and those of the other glided lightly through his scalp. Marco was glad he was lying down; had he been standing, the Rat’s touch would have made his legs collapse out from under him.

Then the Rat’s lips were at his ear. “I would... take you in my mouth. If I may. Please.”

Marco opened his mouth to say… he wasn’t sure what he would have said, or what he _should_ have said. The Rat’s words had suffused him with a blinding white heat, and all that fell from his lips was a wanton moan.

The Rat pulled away slightly to look into his face; he was grinning wickedly again, yet at the same time with a strange sweetness. “I have been told I am good at this, if it will convince you.” His hands moved to the buttons of Marco’s shirt. “Will you let me do this, my lord and liege?” he murmured, his mouth against Marco’s neck again. “Show you my love and my fealty this way?”

Marco was still unable to speak. He banished the stern face of the Patriarch from his mind. If he could not justify mere desire, neither he could justify twisting a third dagger into the Rat’s heart. If he questioned his own wisdom later, he could pray for forgiveness.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, his throat still a desert. “Yes, Jem, I will.” The Rat did not reply, but Marco could feel a breath of exultation against the skin of his throat.

As the buttons came undone and the silk of the shirt was pushed back, the Rat’s hands slid reverently over the flesh he had bared: the broad brown shoulders, the hard pectoral muscles, the small rigid nipples. “So splendid,” he breathed. “You are so beautiful, Marco.”

Marco sucked in a sharp breath; he hadn’t known that the touch of another man’s hands on his breast could be so pleasurable. The sound did not escape the Rat, who moved downward against Marco and anchored himself with one arm around his king. His mouth brushed against one nipple while he caressed the other between the forefinger and thumb of his free hand.

Marco heard himself moan again, this time with more breath than voice. The muscular arm around him tightened, and the Rat lightly scraped his teeth against the nub of flesh he had just been suckling, the stimulation making his lord and liege buck in his embrace. Then his lips moved to Marco’s other nipple, and the hand that had been there began to slide, palm flat, down Marco’s belly.

When it cupped him through his trousers, Marco did not moan again. He cried out sharply. The sound echoed through the trees around them.

The Rat looked up into his face. His pupils were enormous, only a sliver of storm-colored iris around them now. He continued to hold Marco’s gaze, undoing Marco’s trouser buttons without looking at them.

Then Marco saw the Rat’s arm move — and felt the Rat’s hand encircling him, holding him gently but tightly. Marco closed his eyes against the sudden feeling that the woods around them were spinning.

“I will stop if you want me to. Do you?” the Rat asked, very softly, softer than a whisper. The idea was intolerable. Marco, eyes still closed, shook his head. He heard the Rat slide further down on the blanket, felt a hand splay against his upward-turned hip, and then—

—then he was plunging into a bottomless cavern of soaking heat. Its walls were made of satin, and they contracted against him, released him, pulled him deeper inward. The pleasure, the part of his brain crying out _more!_ , drove everything from his mind — the Bolsheviks, Paulina Terveova, the Patriarch. He jerked like a marionette within the Rat’s grasp, only vaguely aware that one of his hands was wound tightly into his captain’s hair and the fingers of other were digging hard enough into the Rat’s shoulder to bruise it.

The Rat made another stifled noise in his throat — a noise that didn’t sound like one of pain at all — and Marco could actually feel it vibrate through his own flesh. He ached to push his hips forward, but the Rat held them rock-steady with both hands. As little as Marco wanted to hurt his dearest friend, being completely restrained from thrusting was a torment. He forced himself to breathe deeply, to lie still and relax his grip, to let the Rat do as he would with him.

For a long while, he floated on a river of pleasure, sometimes loosing a soft moan, sometimes gently stroking the Rat’s hair or shoulders. He could not tell how long it had been before the river ceased to flow steadily and began to course with speed, as if its rapids were gathering in his own veins.

The Rat seemed to know before Marco did. He took in as much as he could, sucking deeply, moving his head rapidly up and down. Marco felt a stab of panic — “Jem, stop, _move_ , I’m going to—” but the Rat did not stop, did not move. He held Marco ever more tightly against him as Marco slipped over the threshold of no return.

He could feel his face contort, his hips tremble in the Rat’s unyielding grip, and he gasped, almost sobbed, as he began to come. The wet cavern of flesh contracted rhythmically against the tip of him, and the sensation drew spurt after spurt out of him. When he was utterly drained, he collapsed onto the blanket, limp, and he made a small noise of discomfort as the touch of the Rat’s mouth became too much to bear.

When he opened his eyes next, the Rat had pulled himself up alongside him again to recline on one elbow, regarding him with something akin to awe. There was no lightness left in his eyes at all, and his lips glistened.

“So that’s what you look like when your vaunted self-control abandons you,” he whispered. He raised his hand, touched his fingertips to Marco’s cheekbone, and slid them downward. Marco turned his head to kiss the Rat’s palm in mid-caress. And then something occurred to him.

“You… you must need…?"

A ghost of a smile touched the Rat’s mouth. “I don’t expect the same, Marco, but…” The ghost vanished. “Touch me. Please.” In an instant he had gone from looking as debauched as any Jiardasian courtier to vulnerable, supplicating, abject in desire. Marco could not become aroused again so quickly, but he ached nonetheless.

“Lie beside me,” he whispered.

The Rat obeyed, nestling his head in the crook of Marco’s neck. His breath began to shorten again as Marco’s fingers undid the buttons of his trousers, and it hitched as Marco reached in.

Marco stroked, then curled his hand around swollen flesh, like velvet to the touch but rigid at its core. Not much different from his own. Except that when he relieved himself of this need, alone in his bedchamber, it was always quick and perfunctory, tinged with a sense of shame.

He did not want this to be quick or perfunctory. He wanted to know for himself the wonder that Rat had experienced when he had watched and felt Marco come undone.

He slipped the caul of skin back and forth over the hardness beneath it, tentatively at first, then finding a rhythm. The Rat began to move with it, his hips jutting forward to match Marco’s stroke and falling back again. He didn’t look up into Marco’s face; his eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. Marco laid his cheek against the top of the Rat’s head as he continued to caress him intimately. Through every part of the Rat’s body that touched his own, he could feel a pulse that pounded like the tide coming in. Once or twice the Rat moaned softly, and the sound slid through Marco like a knife through ripe fruit.

It seemed too soon when the Rat’s labored breaths turned to loud gasps and he began to thrust against Marco’s hand faster and harder, a damp brown lock tumbling into his closed eyes. Marco’s hand tightened around him, and he slid a fingertip back and forth in a spot just beneath the tip, a spot that, for himself, had afforded immense pleasure.

“Come, Jem,” Marco said softly.

He heard one more gasp, sharp and harsh, and then a soft, breath-filled _“Oh”_ of revelation. The flesh in Marco’s hand pulsed hard, and the back of his hand was suddenly wet. Shuddering, still panting, the Rat sank back down onto the blanket.

Marco took him by his pointed chin and kissed him hard; the Rat returned the fervor. His mouth tasted of Marco now, both bitter and salty, as well as of cigarettes. Marco could not imagine recoiling from it. It would dishonor the both of them.

He wiped his hand with the handkerchief he kept in the pocket of his own coat. Then they lay entangled in one another’s arms for a long while, sometimes kissing deeply, sometimes simply brushing lips against lips. For a longer while after they simply lay against one another, half undressed, neither of them speaking, one idly caressing the other’s arm or hair or cheek now and again. Birds chirped and whirred overhead, and animals with little fear of humans stirred now and again in last year’s leaves and brush.

When the Rat finally spoke, his voice was slow and soft. “The Grand Ball is in one week. It would be an opportune time and place for you to choose a queen.”

Marco flinched as if struck.

“What’s wrong?”

Marco’s laugh was quiet but bitter. “How can you ask me that, after... just now?”

He wasn’t looking at the Rat’s face just then, but he knew from experience he was being treated to one of his captain’s assessing gazes.

“‘Just now’ is something that can happen again, and repeatedly.” The softly spoken words were accompanied by another caress of Marco’s face.

Marco pushed the Rat’s hand away and stared hard at him. “And so you’d have me break my marriage vows?”

The Rat’s face went blank with incredulity, then took on an expression that would have withered a forest of oaks. “ _Nobody_ expects you to keep your marriage vows, you damned fool!” He hadn’t raised his voice; with so much bite in it now, he hadn’t needed to. “Least of all, and trust me on this, your future wife! Who may very well end up taking lovers herself!”

“ _I_ expect it,” Marco snapped, feeling every bit the fool the Rat named him but unable to relent. “And I expect her to do the same. I’d rather not have to worry that I will be raising another man’s child to the throne.”

“Well, the first expectation makes one of you. Probably the only king ever in human history.” The Rat was shaking his head now. “As for the second... my advice is that you choose a queen _very_ carefully, because—” His lips quirked, though with little humor. “—there are quite a few women at court who make _me_ look like a cloistered monk.”

Marco expelled his breath harshly. “ _Aside_ from those considerations, Rat, there are the logistics.” He was again feeling perversely glad at having an argument to wield that might bring his captain up short. “Nobles are one thing. A king is quite another. Do you not think there will be eyes upon us that will eventually see? Would you like to wager that the Patriarch will still support me if it becomes widely known?”

“For Christ’s sake, Marco.” The Rat passed a hand over his face in exasperation. “It’s called ‘discretion.’”

“‘Discretion’? As in what has led to your... your conquests being ‘ _only_ the most poorly kept secret in my own bloody court’?”

The Rat flushed. There were a few beats of silence, and then he said, “I suppose I deserved that.” He reached down to tuck himself back into his trousers and rebutton them. Marco, his brief flash of vindication sputtering out in the sudden awkwardness, did the same for himself, then began to rebutton his shirt. Neither of them met the other’s eyes for a moment, and there were now a few inches of space between them.

Then the Rat said reflectively, “It could still be done. You’re right in that I would have to be more careful. You, on the other hand, are carefulness itself. In the end, though, I wonder whether it will truly matter. No other Samavian has your claim to the throne, by virtue of blood or bravery or wisdom of rule. After everything you’ve done for this country, everyone will turn a blind eye, even the bloody Patriarch.”

Marco sighed. “Rat... I don’t know. I would like to think you’re right. I don’t know if the risk is acceptable — especially when I seek reform. You do know that any number of anti-Bolsheviks like to modify the word ‘Communist’ with the word ‘queer’ and its ilk, don’t you?”

A pained look crossed the Rat’s face. “Only too well.” Marco thought of the bitterness of his voice earlier that afternoon.

A few more moments of silence passed. Then the Rat said, “We can come here again. No one else knows of this place but us. It may not be possible to do so often. But it will be possible at times. As for your marriage vows…” His expression was suddenly bleak. Marco's heart seemed to fall through his chest at the sight of it. “I cannot claim to understand. I am not nor ever will be king nor husband, nor am I anything but the most nominal of Christians. But if you decide you must keep them, so be it. Talking you out of pointless self-denial is one thing; talking you out of what you believe to be your honor, quite another.”

Marco turned his head to stare up into the canopy of still-bare branches; the sun no longer shone through them but was drifting downward to the horizon. Despite his own qualms, despite how he ached at the Rat’s air of desolation, a quiet hope began to swell his chest like heated air in a great flying balloon. He mistrusted it. Why would this, alone of everything in his life, be so simple and so sweet?

At last he said, “We shall have to see.” He turned to the Rat and took his hand. “Do not think I would not like to,” he said emphatically. “But what I would _like_ to do matters so much less than what I _must_ do.”

The Rat squeezed his hand and returned his gaze with as much feeling. “If it were otherwise with you, Marco, I never would have followed you out of that alley in London. Let alone…”

He didn’t finish the thought. He began to grin, but in spite of himself it transmuted into an unguarded smile, one that few ever saw. Marco watched it light the Rat's face, much like a lamp that would ever burn brightly. It was a face that would never be handsome, but at this moment it was beautiful, and he drew it close for one last kiss.

 

No event at the palace was one of unalloyed joy for those present, and the Grand Ball was no exception. For servants, of course, it was another night of work. For courtiers, it was another venue at which to jostle for prestige and to attune oneself to danger. For the royal advisors, it was a night to keep a close eye on these jostlings and attunements.

And, for Marco, it was nearly two hours without pause of receiving bows and curtsies, clasping or kissing hands, and never relaxing his mouth from the benevolent, neutral smile of a king whose subjects have gathered for a happy event. He would have done so for three or four hours on end, were it necessary, but he was quite glad when it seemed that he had finally been paid the respects of everyone in attendance.

With a murmured excuse to Rastka, who was then at his side, he disappeared from the ballroom to answer a quick call of nature. Upon returning, he lingered against a pillar, taking everything in.

This vast space had seen many, many Grand Balls, stretching back to the golden days of Samavia half a millennium ago. Since then, some of the grandest had been held by the most corrupt of its kings, who stole bread from the mouths of the destitute so they themselves could live like gods.

Over the last eight years, the Grand Ballroom had been left empty and silent, grime gathering on its surfaces and cobwebs in its corners. War, civil and then international, had left the elite of Samavia with few resources with which to throw Grand Balls and even less desire to dance the night away. The balls might have resumed in time were it not for the sickness, but to revel in music and gaiety as the flowers of Samavia fell would have been an obscenity.

But this was no longer a time of war, nor of sickness. Rudolf, in the council chamber, had been the first to suggest that perhaps the Grand Balls should resume. Marco had frowned; perhaps Austria could still afford such an extravagance, but he was fairly certain Samavia couldn’t. He was surprised to see the eyes of his other advisors light up, to hear them take up Rudolf’s argument. The court _needed_ a revel, they insisted, after so many hard and heartbreaking years. And, with careful planning and resourcefulness, a proper Grand Ball could be thrown without draining Samavia’s newly rebuilt treasury.

As king, Marco could have simply said no. But if his most trusted men, including the Rat, were arguing with one passionate voice for the resumption of the Grand Ball, perhaps his worries about extravagance and frivolity were ill-placed.

It had taken the servants two weeks just to scrub all dust and soot from the white walls, frescoed ceiling, and high arched windows and their sills. Only then could the marble floor be waxed and buffed, and the rosewood wainscoting polished, until both shone like satin.

The round tables surrounding the dancing space had been draped in brilliant white linen and set in their centers with wreaths of flowers picked just that day. Up from the center of each wreath towered a white candle, its beeswax almost as sweet-smelling as the blossoms surrounding it. Fine Sèvres plates and goblets of delicate Waterford crystal, taken down from ancient cupboards and washed until they shone, surrounded the flowers in turn. Now those tables were sat with smiling, laughing guests, and the white tablecloths were stained red here and there with errant drops and spills of wine.

Ribbons of music spun out from the musicians’ stage to wind about dancers and diners and bustling servants alike. It was not a full orchestra, but it was quite a bit more than an ensemble, and their repertoire was considerable. As Marco’s eyes drifted over them, they launched into a slow, melancholic air the arrangement of which bore the stamp of Dvořák.

Marco’s throat tightened as he realized that the composer had taken the melody from an ancient Samavian song. No singers accompanied the musicians tonight, but he knew the lyrics well: The narrator was an exile lamenting the beauty of the land he would never see again. Judging from the sudden lull in conversation and the many wistful expressions in the dancing space and at the tables, Marco was not the only one to be greatly affected.

When the last note had died away, someone began to clap. Others joined in until the ballroom was filled with the din of hands striking hands, and with cheers of joy.

 _Joy._ Marco, still leaning on the pillar, clapped until he could hear no one else clapping and his hands ached from it.

“My lord and liege,” a deep voice from behind him said as the wave of applause subsided.

Marco turned around to see the broad back and shoulders and thick grey hair of a man bowing deeply to him. As the man straightened, Marco recognized the dignified, lined face of the Duke of Novi Bazar.

“Ah. Your lordship,” he said. He was at a loss for other words.

“I am glad to see how happy Your Majesty seems this evening,” the duke said, his smile benign but his gaze apparently quite sincere. “We have all had little enough pleasure in our lives these last few years.”

“Pleasure. Indeed,” Marco said, hoping the man would either keep talking or find some excuse to leave him. Alarmingly, the duke now seemed to be peering at him in concern.

“Your color seems rather high of a sudden, Your Majesty. Do you fare well?”

“Ah, I… have had a glass more of wine than I probably should have,” Marco lied. “It tends to do that to me. But I am grateful for your concern, your lordship. If you will excuse me...”

“Certainly, Your Majesty.” The Duke of Novi Bazar bowed deeply again and turned away. Marco spun in the opposite direction and saw the Rat on his crutches not ten paces away, watching with a mild and neutral expression that did not fool Marco in the slightest.

When he came abreast of his captain he said, in English, in a conversational tone and with a pleasant smile, “I could cheerfully put my bare hands around your throat right now.”

The Rat, in full military uniform tonight with medals and ribbons on display, inclined his head and smiled deferentially. In the same language and a similar tone he replied, “A king must master his emotions, as your father of blessed memory would have said. In any case, I can think of other parts of me that would much more greatly appreciate the touch of your bare hands. Although just one hand would be sufficient.”

Marco’s belly twisted in a distinctly pleasant way. He forced himself to broaden his smile. “Perhaps I shall use a garotte instead.”

The Rat’s smile broadened as well, but only slightly. “Liar. You would miss me terribly. Now go and tell your court about the other person you’d like to take to your bed. Your Majesty.”

If Marco had ever felt quite that combination of affection, amusement, lust, embarrassment, and the desire to punch another human being before, he could not remember it. That last sentiment was made keener by the realization that the Rat’s advice was sound. The longer they stood bantering together, the more explicit the images Marco would be forcing from his mind for the rest of the evening. He bared a bit, but only a bit, of his teeth at the Rat before turning around again.

The table at which he, and for that matter the Rat, would take dinner was not round but long and had been placed upon a raised dais. It bore fourteen place settings, and all but three in the center — his own, and one on either side of his own — were now occupied by his advisors.

Marco strode up the short flight of steps at the right side of the dais. He gained his seat, but he did not sit; he picked up his goblet and a spoon, and he tapped the former gently with the latter several times. The crystal rang true, turning heads, and within seconds the ballroom had begun to fall silent for its king.

Lifting his head and projecting his voice, Marco said, “I am delighted to see all of you here tonight. We have trod a long and weary road, from the highest to the most humble among us, to redeem Samavia from her enemies within and without — and, as if that were not enough, from the ravages of pestilence. There are many who should be here tonight who are not, who instead sleep in the arms of the Savior. Let us pause in our pleasure and remember them.”

He bowed his head deeply; he heard a soft rustle of collars and cravats and the faint clinks of drop earrings as all others in the ballroom did the same. Eyes closed, he sent up a silent prayer for the souls of all Samavians and their allies who had died over the course of six bloody years. Struck down by disease, old and young. Fallen to the swords of the Iaroviches and Maranoviches. Shot by enemy soldiers, bombed by enemy aeroplanes.

Blown to bits by monstrous things in the earth. _Oh, Father._

He breathed deeply to suppress the new tightness in his throat, the stinging behind his eyelids. When he was master again of himself, he raised his head and opened his eyes, and he continued.

“And let us be grateful that we are here, that we are alive, and — for most of us — that at least a few whom we love also stand here with us tonight. Even some we feared would be claimed by death.” He continued to stare out over the sea of faces. If he were to glance in the direction of where he had been standing with the Rat, he would once again founder in a wave of emotion.

“My dearest, dearest ones. After six long years of strife, of treachery, of blood, of sickness, we enjoy a true and righteous peace, we are once again hale, and Prosperity has begun to turn her face to us again. The world continues to be dangerous, of course. Were it to attempt to destroy Samavia again, never would I stand idly by.

“But, just for this night, just for this moment, we can forget the perils and the sorrows of this world. We can savor sweet, strong wine, we can nourish ourselves with the bounty of this very bounteous land, we can dance to the songs that stirred the hearts of our ancestors, and we can claim the joy that is, that should always _have_ been, our rightful heritage.”

He stopped for a heartbeat, and then he cried out, “To Samavia!”

 _“To Samavia!”_ the ballroom roared in one voice.

“Ever may the lamp burn brightly!” he shouted. The cries of response echoed off the gleaming white walls and threatened to deafen him, and to bring tears to his eyes yet again.

When they had died away, he said, “This will be a night for joy for Samavia. And, especially, a night of joy for me. A king should not stand alone before his country. He should choose, and cleave to, a woman who loves and honors that country as much as he does.” He paused, and smiled. “And if she is an exceptional example of the beauty of that country’s women, so much the better.” An indulgent chuckle floated up from the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye Marco saw Rudolf half-turn in his seat with a cocked eyebrow, which was followed by a knowing smile.

Marco’s expression grew solemn again. He raised his head and let three words ring out, each of them distinctly.

“Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova.”

The ballroom fell utterly silent. Then there was the soft scuffle of slippers against the floor and the breathy rustle of silk as a dark head rose from a round table not far from the dais.

The hem of the pale-blue gown swirled around her ankles, and the neckline dipped only to the midpoint of her olive-skinned breastbone, a small Orthodox cross dangling above it on a slim silver chain. The current fashions of Paris and London were not as modest, but Melzarr was not London, much less Paris. Her raven’s-wing hair had been gathered around her head in two braids that met at her nape and fell down her back in a thick plait woven with ribbons the same color as her gown.

She walked in the silence to the dais, and then she dropped into as deep a curtsy as she could without prostrating herself. When she rose, her eyes struck Marco again, and _struck_ was the right word to describe the effect on him of the unnerving black fire in them. And, he saw — now that he was looking — the promise of a different sort of heat.

But he also saw the sharp edges of anxiety, the marks of grief. He remembered that she was very young; she was older than he had been when he helped restore Samavia, but girls walked a different path in life than boys did. Though this was her country as much as his, she had set down roots in Moscow and Paris, roots that had been torn up violently. And just as his own father would not be to embrace him when he took her to wife, hers would not be there to deliver her into Marco’s arms.

He rose from his seat and, careful to make no haste, walked down the steps to the floor. He stood before her, smiling — and then he dropped to one knee. A gasp went up throughout the ballroom. As far as Marco knew, no other king or prince of the blood had ever proposed to a future queen like a common man.

He slipped a hand into the pocket of his evening jacket and took it out again. Then he spread both hands before her. The chandelier glinted off what they held.

“Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova. Will you marry me? Will you bear our country fine young princes? Will you stand beside me to rule Samavia as my queen?”

Though she could not have been completely surprised, she looked utterly stunned. He could see her pulse beating rapidly at the side of her throat. Then she smiled tremulously, and her eyes welled.

“I will, my lord and liege,” she said. “I will.”

The silence echoed in his ears as he took her right hand and slid the ring onto her second finger. Then he rose again, took her face in both hands, and touched his lips to hers. Though it was not obvious to any who watched them, the pressure she returned made a dizzying heat blossom in him from throat to knees. The sound of his blood in his own ears was almost louder than the furor of approval and felicitations that erupted throughout the ballroom.

“Your studies,” he said softly at her ear. “They included music, as I recall. Did they include dance as well?”

“My formal studies, no,” she murmured. “But I can acquit myself quite well on the floor, Your Majesty.”

He raised his head and looked in the direction of the musicians. “ _Maestro!_ Play for the Lady Terveova and me!”

The musicians launched into a _furiant_. As Marco caught the wrist of Paulina Nikolaevna, he found himself grinning at her. For a second time, she smiled too, this time without trepidation. He didn’t wait for it to ignite him anew before he led her into the space reserved for dancing.

One of the many, many things he had learned as a prince of the blood was how to dance, but it had only ever been in private, with a tutor. His future queen may not have spent as much time dancing in Paris as she had studying, but her feet were not strangers to a dance floor, and she met his every move flawlessly. The exertion brought blood into her dark cheeks and a sheen to the skin of her face, and after a point it seemed as though her smile were chiseled into her features and the glow of delight dyed into the substance of her eyes.

Other couples had joined them one by one, arranging themselves around them and following their lead. When the musicians hit the final impassioned notes of the _furiant_ , Marco looked up to see all other dancers bowing or curtsying deeply to him and Paulina Nikolaevna, and to hear another explosion of cheers from the rest of the ballroom.

They continued for two more dances. The next was a slow, swaying _sousedská_ , during which Marco forced himself to think of the royal ledgers, suppurating battle wounds, the Duke of Novi Bazar _in extremis_ — anything but the closeness with which he was holding Paulina Nikolaevna. His relief was profound when the next dance turned out to be a _polonaise_ , lively and stately at the same time. They and their fellow dancers stepped elegantly about the floor until the musicians hit the finale. Then, amid fresh applause, the servants began to bring out the first course.

The dancers around them returned to their own tables, and Marco, with Paulina Nikolaevna’s hand in his, led her to the dais. Each of the royal advisors, upon introduction, smiled and kissed her hand, and she inclined her head and gave each a demure smile in return. Marco cast a sharp eye on Rudolf during her introduction to the Austrian prince, but he needn’t have worried. Rudolf’s gaze was mild and benevolent and his voice the same. Any further winks or quirks of the lip would be made when Marco’s future bride was not looking.

As Marco held out the chair to his left for Paulina Nikolaevna and she settled into it, he heard the thump of crutches to his right.

“Paulina,” he said in Samavian, “I would introduce you to my closest advisor and friend, Captain Jeremy Ratcliffe, once and still occasionally referred to as ‘the Rat.’”

“Ah, yes,” she said, in English, before the Rat could speak. “You accompanied His Majesty to Paris to tell my mother that the lamp was lighted, did you not?”

“I did, my lady,” the Rat said.

“Making that journey, from England to Samavia and home again, was an astoundingly brave thing for a young boy to do, especially a young boy without the use of his legs who had never been out of London before,” she said, unmitigated intensity returning to her voice and her eyes. “The debt we all owe to His Majesty King Ivor is a debt that extends to you as well.”

The Rat raised his head slightly, and his smile was both warm and grave. “You do me a great deal of honor, Lady Terveova. I would drop to one knee and declare fealty to you as well as to your future husband, but…” The formal smile shifted into the familiar sly grin.

It elicited a laugh from Paulina Nikolaevna, and her laughter was as surprising to Marco as her smile. She was too young to share her mother’s huskiness of voice, but not too young to laugh with a rich, dark sensuality. At the periphery of his vision, Marco saw Rudolf’s eyebrows come up. He pointedly did not look at the Austrian prince.

For a while the three of them, the young king and his young queen-to-be and his young captain, sat and spoke of events gone by, events of the present, the trivial and the profound. They spoke and smiled and leaned forward and gestured with all the animation and curiosity of youth, if without the innocence of the world so often and so carelessly attributed to all youth.

Then Marco took notice of a servant decanting rich red wine into his glass. “Thank you,” he said quietly to the young girl. She lowered her head submissively, filled every other glass at the table on the dais, and slipped silently away in the manner of servants to the highborn everywhere.

Marco stood, raised the glass in his right hand, and tapped gently at its edge with his spoon so as not to spill the wine. Within the span of seconds, the ballroom sunk into another hush.

“My dearest ones,” he said. “I would like to propose a toast: To my future queen, Paulina Nikolaevna Terveova. And to the land she will rule beside me: Samavia.”

Sparkles filled the vast space of the ballroom as glasses were raised and their facets caught the light of the chandelier. Glass rang on glass, and voices lifted. Nobles, courtiers, and even servants shouted the name of the woman to whom they would someday bend their knees. “And to His Majesty Prince Ivor!” a cry went up, and hundreds echoed this, too.

Marco felt a hand, smaller and softer than his own, slip into his left and tighten around it firmly as Paulina Nikolaevna stood beside him, chin high and eyes bright. And, below the level of the table and unnoticed by any but himself, a slim, strong hand settled itself on his right knee, pressed it forcefully just once, and was gone.

_It may not be possible to do so often. But it will be possible at times._

It were as if the course of his life suddenly turned on a hinge. Behind him, genteel poverty and endless wandering, the dangers of espionage, the twin abattoirs of war and disease, the most crushing loss he would ever know. Before him, for the first time, a wide, verdant, flower-strewn plain of joy, as lovely as any real one under a hot Samavian sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to [Surexit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/pseuds/surexit) for her thorough and thoughtful beta work on this fic. Also, I'd like to thank [osprey_archer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer) for getting me interested in this nascent fandom.
> 
> I've got something of a research jones when it comes to writing fanfic. Fortunately, this story didn't require a great deal of specialized research into WWI. For the unfamiliar, the [Steyr M1912](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steyr_M1912) was a semi-automatic pistol developed for the Austro-Hungarian Army, and Novorossiysk was [the scene of the turning point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War#South_Russia.2C_Ukraine.2C_and_Kronstadt_1920-21) in the Russian Civil War that gave the Reds the upper hand over the Whites (anti-Bolsheviks).
> 
> John M. Barry's [_The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History_](http://www.johnmbarry.com/_i_the_great_influenza__the_epic_story_of_the_deadliest_plague_in_history__i__58204.htm) (on which [the relevant Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic) draws heavily) is an excellent source of information on the 1918 pandemic, which killed anywhere from 2.5% to 5% of all people on earth. Of the pandemic's three waves (spring 1918, autumn 1918, and spring 1919), the second was the most virulent, [turning the immune systems of healthy young adults and adolescents against them](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm). Because the pattern didn't square with contemporary understanding of influenza, scientists argued for years over whether it actually _was_ influenza; therefore, I do not call it such in this story. [This study of the pandemic's spread across Europe](http://influenza.sph.unimelb.edu.au/data/S0001/chapters/P2_chap_1_2.pdf) seems to indicate that the first wave hit the Balkans quite late, in July; the second wave relatively early, in September.
> 
> I can't remember from Barry's book how likely recovery was once the complications of pulmonary hemorrhage and edema had developed, but the last sentence in [this article](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/pandemics/2012/12/spanish_flu_mystery_why_don_t_scientists_understand_the_1918_flu_even_after.html)'s fourth paragraph suggests it was not unknown. I have read nothing indicating that "Spanish" influenza left anyone permanently hoarse unless they had existing bronchiopulmonary issues for the virus to exacerbate. This could have, of course, been the case for someone who lived in urban poverty as a child, then began to smoke later. (Note that Edwardian London [had terrible air pollution](http://tinyurl.com/kbp92xt).)
> 
> Into his [Slavonic Dances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavonic_Dances), Antonín Dvořák incorporated such traditional Eastern European dances as the [_furiant_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furiant), [_sousedská_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousedsk%C3%A1), and [_polonaise_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonaise). If Samavia were a real country, he might have honored some of its native music in the same way.
> 
> The gown Paulina wears when her mother presents her to Marco was inspired by [this](http://i.imgur.com/qVCxfFX.jpg). No one particular image inspired the gown she wears to the Grand Ball. Finally, the name of her late father owes itself to a Captcha I got recently: "terveov general." :)


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